


the pilgrimage

by tsukinotsurugi (forgetfulAmoeba)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Spoilers for Anime Only Fans, a number of characters are mentioned in an off-screen fashion, canonverse, levi drops an f bomb, some names are not mentioned but alluded to, takes place after season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27193984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetfulAmoeba/pseuds/tsukinotsurugi
Summary: Levi makes a memorial trip for the 14th.
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	the pilgrimage

**Author's Note:**

> This, is really late and an idea I had after the fact, that I tried writing and came up with the worst paragraphs known to man that I promptly dumped into the nearest compost heap never to be seen again. And then I tried again, to not much greater improvement. But it is an idea that would not let me go till I tried and put it down, so I hope that you will forgive me for my indulgence as I close my eyes and hit the post button.

Jean knocked on the door to the commander's office. He'd been doing the rounds and only returned the night before, but this morning he'd written up a report collating the information from the engineers in the outskirts and was handing it in.

"Come in." On hearing the command, he opened the door and entered, to the sight of Hange bent over their desk, making furious scribbles into a notepad as they studied an array of documents in front of them. The smell of coffee hung heavy in the air, evidenced by the collection of mugs at the side of the desk, alongside a plate of crumbs. It didn't help that the windows were tightly closed, adding to the stale and stuffy atmosphere.

Jean frowned. It was a minor miracle Hange wasn't vibrating off their chair with the amount of caffeine they had apparently consumed in such a short space of time. Although it was more likely that they'd been pulling an all-nighter, but Hange being Hange, it was hard to tell from their usual unkempt look, and the too-bright eye gleaming from behind the glasses gave nothing away.

At any rate, it wasn't like Levi to let things get to this level. Even if he had been unsuccessful in getting Hange to call it a night, he would've been through the place like an angry little tornado already, clearing out the crockery while grumbling about the Evils of the Black Swill, aired the place out and maybe started a new fire to counteract the nip in the air as the weather started getting colder. In fact, given the time of day, he himself should have been here, reviewing his share of paperwork, the smell of his own brew permeating the atmosphere instead.

But the chair and the sofa that Levi normally occupied lay empty, the man nowhere to be seen.

"Here's the consolidated report from the engineers," said Jean, putting the document down on top of the other reports, straightening the haphazard pile as he did so. "Where's Heichou?" 

"Thank you. He's off a couple of days," answered Hange distractedly, chewing the end of their pen as they continued scanning through the blocks of text.

"Off? What?" the answer catching Jean by surprise. Levi never took a day off, not even when he was sick, preferring to sniffle his way through the day than to lay low, his surly self more sour than usual while everyone else tried to keep their distance. It must have been something major.

"Who knows? Well actually, I know why but I don't know exactly where," replied Hange cryptically, flipping the page of one of the documents. "It's the 14th," they offered a few moments later as explanation, but the information did not enlighten Jean in any way. Then, their eye widened as they caught on to some passage. "Oooh Armin was right," they muttered, starting a fresh barrage on the notepad, their concentration focused on the work in front of them as Jean's presence was reduced to a minor distraction.

Jean shook his head, deciding that it wasn't worth disrupting the commander's train of thought to figure out what they meant. Levi would be back when he was back, he supposed. "I'm going then," he said as he turned and made his way back to the door.

"Can you thank Armin for me?" Hange called out, a clear dismissal.

"Will do," he said as he exited the office.

~-~-~

The wind frisked through Levi's hair as he rode through the countryside. He should be at his destination soon, having made good time yesterday. The weather had been good to him, a little cool, but bright and holding steady. Last night under the stars reminded him of his first days in the Corps, when he and Farlan and Isabel were fresh out of the Underground, of the nights they snuck up to the roof of the barracks, the vista so mesmerising that their conversation would peter out and they would simply look at the view in silent awe. The air really did smell different out here, he thought.

He was nearly there. He could smell the salt.

It wasn't the same stretch as they had first come upon when they made their first foray out of the walls to the coast, neither was it the area where they encountered the ships from Marley. It was much further down, away from all the bustle, a wild stretch of a range of high cliffs that dropped straight down into the sea, the waves crashing on and scouring the rocky mass below.

Although it had no connection to any event, he could understand the allure of the place that drew him here. It was like the walls all over again, standing on the edge looking out on to the sea not a dissimilar experience to standing on the top of the walls looking out on the landscape below, a demarcation of the edges of their world.

Pulling his thoughts together as he neared his destination, he directed his horse to a clearing some ways back, sheltered by trees and away from the wind, and slid off the saddle. Taking some items out of the saddlebags that he repacked into a little satchel, he loosened and removed the tack, hanging it on some sturdy branch, and let the horse free to graze, knowing that she would not wander far. Then he slung the bag on his shoulder and started for the cliff edge. 

But before he got there, he made his way over to where a small sapling stood. It was an oak seedling that he'd spotted in a patch of forest on his way here the last time and decided on a whim to dig up and transplant here. The sapling had survived his clumsy handling and thrived in its new location. It was slender but healthy looking, coming up to Levi's shoulder.

"Fuck you're gonna be taller than me already," he said to it. 

Rubbing his fingers over a leaf, he contemplated briefly about taking one before deciding against it, and continued his way down to the coastline. Reaching the land's end he wandered along to find a suitable spot, settling on the grassy patch of a section of cliff that jutted out into the sea.

Sitting right at the edge, he pulled the few things out from his satchel. First, a couple of bottles, and then a neatly wrapped package that he started to unpack. Opening it up, he took out the platter of small cakes that Sasha had collaborated with Nicolo to prepare for him. There was a dark, dense looking brown slab, almost gooey in texture. He could practically taste the cloying sweetness just looking at it, and Levi shuddered at the tooth-rotting richness of the thing. He knew who that one was for. He was almost glad in a perverse way that they did not know of such a confectionery before this, unsure of who would win in a battle of wills about the amount of sweets one could safely consume. The second one, yellow-brown with darker flecks, had a distinct fruity scent, made from a longish yellow fruit found bunched together in a way that Sasha laughingly said resembled someone's hair, to which he grudgingly had to agree. And the last one was pale, plain and simple but with a delicate, sophisticated flavour. It was perfect for a connoisseur of smells, he thought.

Chocolate, banana and vanilla. Foraged from the areas previously under titan control, and identified by Nicolo. Bananas turned out to be common enough and easy to cultivate, becoming a food for the masses, but the intense labour required to produce chocolate and vanilla turned them into luxury foodstuffs that only the nobility and well-to-do could afford. And to carefully control to maximise their profits, thought Levi with a cynical snort. But he supposed it kept the nobles happy, reaping the rewards of their investments and keeping the funding going, so he shouldn't complain. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

He looked down at the bottles again, at Moblit's favourite beer, setting one beside himself and the other on the opposite side of the platter. Finally, he pulled out a small bar wrapped in wax paper. "For you," Sasha had said. Unwrapping it, it turned out to be a piece of dark chocolate. He groaned. "If I die of a heart attack, it will be all your fault," he grouched, waving the bar at the sky.

He took a nibble of it gingerly, and exhaled when he found that it wasn't very sweet, bitter almost. He smiled. Suitable for him he supposed. At least Sasha knew his tastes. He cracked the lid of the beer bottle off on the edge of a rock and raised it up in the air with a little nod before taking a small swig.

The next while was spent munching on the bar between sips of beer, listening to the waves and the occasional call of birds, feeling the heat of the sun passing in and out of the puffy white clouds scooting across the sky, keeping him pleasantly warm but not overheated.

When he was finished with his treat, he lay back and closed his eyes, thinking about the last few years, with the titans gone and getting outside the walls, how they'd opened that little bit to the world, the technological advances that they had to catch up on before they were ready to take on the world. About the deal with the hairy animal they'd have to make to protect the island. He sighed and told himself, it'll all be worth it. He'd work to make sure that it would all be worth it.

Just a while more, he whispered.

Sitting up again, he took the cakes, one by one, and crumbled them over the cliff edge. He did the same with the beer, opening it and pouring it into the sea below. Wiping his hands clean, he dusted himself off as he stood up, looking over the water, trying to imagine that he could see all the way to the other side. To the truth of their world.

He shook his head. The spell was over.

Packing the empty things back into the satchel, he put it over his shoulder and started to walk away. But after a few steps he turned to look back one more time, searching the horizon for something, some sign. But the scene remained unchanging, the sun shining, the waves beating against the shoreline, their assault unceasing.

He turned and made his way resolutely back home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry if my timeline and details are a little fuzzy :p


End file.
